The Truth About Domain Masking

This post comes to us from BrokerageU:

If you are one of the many agents who own multiple domain names then you are probably already familiar with the term "domain forwarding."

Forwarding is when you take one of your domains, let's just use an example and say that you own yourname.com and direct it to another one of your other domains, for example iamthebestagent.com. This can make some specific marketing campaigns more effective if you are giving people different domains.

If you have previously used one domain, but have since changed where your site lives, then forwarding can also be beneficial for you. Sometimes agents might even purchase extra commonly misspelled versions of their domain name, just planning to set up forwarding to make sure their visitors end up at the right destination.

Whatever your case may be, when purchasing multiple domain names, keep one key factor in mind: you can only build SEO for websites with content. This means that your main site (the one you might be forwarding all other domains to) is the one that houses all of your pages, ongoing blog posts, area info and your listings. That main site will get all the credit in regards to SEO.

So, if you're purchasing extra domains in the hopes of actually getting each one to rank in search engine results, make sure to at least have a landing page on each one. A simple forward would not get the job done, in that case.

If you do choose to forward, there is one pitfall to watch out for. Make 1,000% sure NOT to use masking. Masking is when you forward one domain to your main site, but still display the URL that the user typed in. Masking can zap all of that great SEO that you've worked so hard to build and is not a good practice. Go ahead and set up your forwarding to display your main site's URL.

Depending on what registrar you currently use, the actual forwarding set up will be different from one to the next. Luckily, there are loads of registrars who make it fairly simple to set up your domain forwarding correctly. Go Daddy is one of the most common, so feel free to read their documentation. They even provide you with a preview function so that you can ensure your forward is mapping to the correct location.

To view the original article, visit the BrokerageU blog.